The Charlatans UK have released a new music video for “We Are Love.” The band, recently announced their new album, We Are Love, will drop on October 31, via BMG. Along with the news, The Charlatans UK have also shared plans for a December UK tour, including shows in London, Manchester, Glasgow and more.
“We Are Love” is a celebratory statement of intent, an urgent, limber, clattering love song to the human race. Propelled forward by driving drums and anthemic guitar, frontman Tim Burgess describes it as “like an open-top car ride in the credits of your favorite movie, driving along the coast to somewhere amazing.”
One of the first tracks to emerge as they were writing, guitarist Mark Collins explains: “Early on, we thought it felt right. And it turned out that way: first single, title track, second song on the album. And things started forming around ‘We Are Love.’ There was a certain energy to it that drove us forward.”
An eight-year gap between albums is the longest ever for one of the UK’s most enduring bands. A combination of covid, solo projects, life’s complexities and the fact that its five members – Tim Burgess (vocals) Martin Blunt (bass), Mark Collins (guitar), Tony Rogers (keyboards) and Pete Salisbury (drums) – live scattered across Europe, meant that it took longer than usual for the stars to align at the right place, right time, right vibe. They took the time to carefully select a recording A-team of production duo Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange and Lightspeed Champion) and Fred Macpherson (Rachel Chinouriri, Jessica Winter), plus Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries).
Recorded at two places that are totemic in The Charlatans UK’s history – Rockfield in Wales and their own Big Mushroom space in Middlewich, Cheshire – Burgess cites hauntology and psychogeography as two concepts that swirled in his head as the band dug into the album making. For one thing, their return to storied farm studio Rockfield for the first time in almost 30 years, since they made their fifth album Tellin’ Stories, was an important step. As a band, they hadn’t been there since keyboard player Rob Collins was killed, in the middle of that album’s sessions, in a car crash at the bottom of the track leading to the farm. Throughout the record, you can hear The Charlatans UK’s awareness of the stuff that’s made them – the highs and the lows; the desire to honor their own mighty legacy, whilst not being defined by it; a career-long drive to be progressive and innovative.
“The whole idea of hauntology and psychogeography is represented by us going back to Rockfield, where so much history has happened for The Charlatans,” says Burgess. “That was important as a way of honoring every member who’s played in the band. So we’re honouring ourselves, our past, feeling that energy and reincarnating it, doing something fresh, brand new.”
pre-order We Are Love by The Charlatans UK HERE
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source northerntransmissions.com ’
